Does reading interrupt life, or life reading?

A few new one- and two-liners to ring in a new format for Montaigbakhtinian.

Lesson of the body surfer: The size of the wave matters and so does your position, and your courage.

There is some connection between God, or gods, and performance evaluations. I am not sure what it is, but my sense is that you only get performance evaluations in a godless universe.

Through our speech, silences, posture and positioning we regulate what can be said to us, and a few may wonder at the repetitiveness or narrowness of their conversations.

“I can no longer reach my breaking point.”

Bending over a stream we try to fill our hands with water, and we turn, too, to our memories and can only drink from what has not run out. Of making love to Madeleine I recall the bed in the corner with its little high window, and some of her remarks afterwards, and a sense that it was very pleasureful and a regret that it was only once.

Humankind will have reached a next level when the little packets we are given are no longer openable.

Denying the economic circumstances of at least a quarter of the American population, to say nothing of human mortality, in the midst of the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt famously proposed, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The truth is but rarely spoken and less often welcome.

Intolerance is a way of coping with (a sense of) failure.

He greatly appreciated the extra service but did not leave a big tip because he wanted to think the waiter had been acting out of affection. (The waiter wanted to think that, too, while getting a big tip.)

Surviving the Twenty-First Century

What is This?

Now with 1,900 followers, anglophones et francophones, spanning the globe. (The author is pleased, too, to have made a Best Essays list of Notable Essayists.)

Meanwhile, this collection of short and longer essays, aphorisms, poems and quotations continues to expand. From another dear reader: “I am constantly waiting for new posts because your work is quite amazing.”